48 marketing books you need to read (updated for 2020)

Staying on top of what works, what no longer works, and what’s new in the digital sales and marketing industry sometimes feels impossible. (Seriously, when does a day go by without some tidbit of industry news that leaves us scratching our heads? I’m looking at you, Google.)

Thankfully, some of the greatest minds in our industry — Seth Godin, David Meerman Scott, Ann Handley, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, and others — have made our lives so much easier by sharing their wealth of knowledge, insights, and expertise in the following 48 marketing books.

Bonus Tip: At IMPACT Live, Paul will be digging deeper into cognitive content marketing and what the path to a more artificially intelligent future will look like for marketers. Get your ticket here right now!

We’re living in a culture of listeners and teachers, which is where an effective content marketing strategy comes into play.

In order for you to be effective, you can’t rely on keyword stuffing and link building. You need to produce quality content.

In his book, Sheridan shows you the structure for an quality content strategy that will boost your web presence while generating trust amongst your audience by answering their questions.

The second edition, released in late 2019, was greatly expanded to include massive sections on video marketing, making the perfect inbound marketing website, and so on. Also, the new audiobook version (released on Christmas Even 2019) is narrated by Marcus himself!

In this book, Godin outlines a set of five principles that you must follow, as a Permission Marketer, to be effective:

As a Permission Marketer, you are a farmer and constantly need to work at harvesting your crop/customers. An Interruption Marketer is just a hunter and tries to kill something once with a single bullet.

Permission is a process, not a single moment.

Never breach the trust of your customer once they grant you permission to speak with them by selling their data to someone else.

Frequency is always better than reach.

Give a prospect a reason to pay attention –- you have to offer an explicit reward, information, education, entertainment, or even cold hard cash to get the customer to opt-in to the message.

In his book, Solomon describes what client service teams of all industries to build deeper relationships with clients and shares tips to help clients understand what they can expect and demand from their marketing agency.

If you’re having trouble positioning your product or service, it could be due to the lack of effective communication. In their book, Al and Jack walk you through the importance of effective communication when it comes to positioning your brand and how you can use it to frame yourself in your persona’s head.

Weinberg takes classic sales methods, such as cold calling, and adds a modern spin that makes them more effective and less abrasive. His methodology for identifying targets aligns perfectly with the inbound marketing approach to creating your buyer persona.

Learn how you can simplify your sales process just by being more selective, in this book.

Sometimes even the biggest companies fall — especially if they’re not disrupting their industry and embracing new technology.

Christensen believes there are ways for big companies to stay agile and compete with the up-and-comers in disruptive innovations. In fact, he argues management is the primary contributor to why many companies fail and it has nothing to do with their engineering or tech teams.

As the Head of Community at Airbnb, Douglas shows you how to extract the same principles of major brands, religions, and actual cults to get people excited about your brand and turn them into lifelong customers.

Reflecting on these, Atkin outlines a simple 10-step formula for elevating a brand to cult status:

In his book, Bryan Kramer analyzes how and why people share experiences and information, as well as what makes people share things. The goal of Shareology is to figure out how to make your brand more human and shareable.

With numerous outlets and forms of content available, it’s important to ensure you’re not spamming your audience, but telling a story and engaging with them.

In this book, Hanley shows marketers why the scammy and spammy tactics that worked in the past are no longer effective and how today’s buyers value the authenticity, transparency, and honesty that comes with content marketing.

What are you passionate about? Did you know you could use your passion to crush personal branding?

The biggest point Vaynerchuk wants you to take away from this book is the importance of building your personal brand and leveraging it in your business endeavors. — No one knows personal branding better than Gary Vee!

An important step in developing your inbound strategy is knowing who your buyers are.

Brainfluence utilizes psychology, neuroscience, and neuromarketing to better understand how consumers make decisions. And, through those practices, Dooley outlined how they could be applied to your marketing.

Brand new in 2020, how do some brands attract word-of-mouth buzz and radical devotion around products as everyday as car insurance, surfboards, and underwear? They embody the most powerful marketing force in the world: die-hard fans.In this essential book, leading business growth strategist David Meerman Scott and fandom expert Reiko Scott interview young entrepreneurs, veteran business owners, startup founders, nonprofits, and companies big and small to pinpoint which practices separate organizations that flourish from those stuck in stagnation.

Finally a guide to creating and publishing the kind of content that will make your business thrive. Everybody Writesis a go-to guide to attracting and retaining customers through stellar online communication, because in our content-driven world, every one of us is, in fact, a writer.

If you have a web site, you are a publisher. If you are on social media, you are in marketing. And that means that we are all relying on our words to carry our marketing messages. We are all writers.

People today are inundated with nonstop content, broken promises, endless product extensions―and pressure from articles titled, “The 7 Things That Successful People Do Every Day.”

They don’t know where to look or who to trust. So, how do you win their time, and their confidence?

From renowned advertising creative director Ron Tite comes a powerful approach to cutting through the noise―three words: Think. Do. Say. Ditch the jargon, and start making good things happen for you and your organization

Conversational Marketingis the definitive guide to generating better leads and closing more sales. Traditional sales and marketing methods have failed to keep pace with the way modern, internet-savvy consumers purchase goods and services.

Modern messaging apps, which allow for real-time conversations and instant feedback, have transformed the way we interact in our personal and professional lives, yet most businesses still rely on 20th century technology to communicate with 21st century customers.

Online forms, email inquiries, and follow-up sales calls don’t provide the immediacy that modern consumers expect. Conversational marketing and sales are part of a new methodology centered around real-time, one-on-one conversations with customers via chatbots and messaging.

The most innovative companies around the world have achieved remarkable marketing results by fundamentally changing their approach. By creating value for customers through the use of owned media and the savvy use of content, these businesses have dramatically increased customer loyalty and revenue. Some of them have even taken it to the next step and developed a marketing function that actually pays for itself.

Killing Marketingexplores how these companies are ending the marketing as we know it―in favor of this new, exciting model.